


together, after

by burningtoashes



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Found Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post-Game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:28:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25387573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burningtoashes/pseuds/burningtoashes
Summary: Shuichi doesn’t know what he wants to do. He thinks it might be enough to sit on their faded couch, playing with a rip in the cover, and exist. He thinks it might be more than enough.
Relationships: Harukawa Maki & Saihara Shuichi & Yumeno Himiko
Comments: 2
Kudos: 34
Collections: Purrsonal Picks





	together, after

**Author's Note:**

> I really should be working on my longer project(s), but I've been getting my butt kicked by *gestures at the world at large* lately, and this served as a nice little warm-up to get back into writing in general.
> 
> Also sometimes I just think about Maki and Himiki and Shuichi after the game, and it makes my chest get all funny. I love them so much.

They find a cheap apartment in the city together. There is not enough room for three people, but they make do. And there is at least a small balcony, where Maki has taken to growing vegetables. There are plants indoors too. Those are Shuichi's, a collection of flowers and cacti and ferns that keeps expanding as he keeps bringing new ones home. The apartment smells like dirt and sometimes sunshine.

Himiko brings home a keyboard one day, Shuichi's birthday, the birthday he remembered. They've been trying to learn how to play the piano together. Maki sits on the couch and reads a book about some kind of mythology or history or culture and listens to them fumble their way through Chopsticks. The sound is not as rich as a real piano, but it fills their apartment well enough. Maki tells them what she’s learned from her book, and they listen too. 

After, sometime after they had climbed their way out of that cage, he had used his talent one last time to find their real names, and they use those for the mundane needs of bills and taxes and job applications. None of them use those names out loud. Shuichi sometimes forgets his, and he has to look it up again to remember.

They had all had families. They had all been problem children. They had all found refuge in a TV show. The details do not matter much. They do not reach out to their old lives, and their old lives do not reach out to them. 

On the street, nobody recognizes them. Or they simply don't care enough to say anything, keeping it to whispers and quick glances. The world moves on quickly. But Team Danganronpa quietly disbands, and Shuichi follows the dissolution in the newspaper and watches merchandise with his face on it move into the clearance racks and listens to children on their way home from school talking about sports like soccer and wrestling and tennis, and he swallows that as his reward. The killing games are done, and all that's left is the three of them, small and quiet, in their cheap apartment. He cuts Maki's hair short, so she can better show off the new line of piercings on her ear. Himiko's grows long. She ties it back with ribbons.

In the closet are their clothes. Not their uniforms- they'd thrown those out after, sometime after they had stepped into the world again- but Himiko's t-shirts with nonsense English words and Maki's collection of patterned, comfortable sweatpants, and Shuichi's array of sneakers for every color of the rainbow. Everything is new, except Kaito's jacket, the one that Maki had not let go of since he'd slid, empty, out of that spaceship. She wears it sometimes, kneeling on the balcony at night, tending the vegetables. There is a faded bloodstain on the collar, visible because Shuichi knows where to look.

Sometimes he thinks about the previous killing games. Sometimes he thinks about the people that Rantaro must have loved enough to sacrifice himself for, the way that Maki had tried to do, the way that Keebo did. He wonders if they live together too, in a cheap apartment without enough space. He wonders if they'd watched. He wonders- and he stops, because he can't go down that road. He’s done with picking up mysteries.

Himiko is learning how to paint. It takes up even more room in their too small apartment, with the keyboard and the house plants. Her cheeks are always streaked with color, her fingertips stained in pigment. Maki steals the paintbrush from her once and covers Himiko's nose with bright blue freckles and laughs. The finished paintings go on the walls. They are messy but bright. They are full of life.

Maki is thinking about going back to school. She reads books and books and books and books on every topic she can get her hands on. When Shuichi joins her on the balcony sometimes, she talks quietly about photosynthesis and pollination. She learns to fix the things that break in their too small apartment- their oven, the clock, the sticky closet door. She learns how to cook and talks about chemistry. When Himiko brings home plastic stars one day, Maki’s birthday, they arrange them in real constellations on the ceiling, and Maki tells them the stories behind each one, where they had come from, who had given them names.

Shuichi doesn’t know what he wants to do. He thinks it might be enough to sit on their faded couch, playing with a rip in the cover, and _exist_. He thinks it might be more than enough.

On weekends they train. They rent ice skates in the winter, or they rent tennis rackets in the spring, or they go to the ocean in the summer to swim. Himiko is learning aikido, and they let her practice moves in the apartment, knocking things over and accidentally denting the walls. 

They go to the natural history museum, and Shuichi stretches his arms and lets butterflies land on every inch of him as Maki and Himiko snap photos. They go to the science and engineering museum and watch gears click and clack and spin. There are little robots that blink at them and turn in circles. Himiko pats all their heads. They go to the air and space museum and board a spaceship. Shuichi and Maki make sound effects like children, and Himiko has to apologize for them while they lean on each other and laugh and laugh and-

When they get home, Maki cooks. Shuichi is allowed to cut the vegetables, the ones she had grown. Himiko isn't allowed to touch anything in the kitchen anymore, not after she knocked a whole pot of vegetable soup on the floor. Maki has become a good cook. It's almost as good as...

Sometimes he thinks about the previous killing games, but he is always thinking about their own. He doesn't wake up screaming from his dreams anymore. Himiko still sometimes crawls in with Maki, her small, quiet feet on the floor waking him up, but those times are fewer and far between. He used to think about the deaths and the murders, used to clutch his chest and gasp out loud when he recalled blood on Kaito's chin, tears on Kaede's cheeks. He doesn't think about that part anymore.

He thinks about the dining hall, mostly. Eating breakfast, together. Good mornings, bad mornings, mornings in between. He mostly thinks about that. 

Kaede would hum while she was chewing. Rantaro would push any meat to the side. Ryoma took his coffee black. Kirumi only ate after everyone else was finished. Tenko would watch Himiko with delight, her food untouched. Angie would say her version of grace first. Kiyo always thanked the chef. Miu took distracted bites while tinkering with her latest project. Gonta ate gracefully, never making a mess. Kaito ate like he'd starve in the next five seconds. Kokichi would make funny faces out of the food on his plate. Keebo would place his chin on the table and stare wistfully. Tsumugi would-

Tsumugi would...

If he keeps telling himself that he's fine, he'll have to believe it eventually. As long as he believes in the lie...then it isn't a lie anymore.

It might take a while. It might take the rest of their lives, being small and quiet together in their cheap apartment with the plants and the keyboard and the paintings and the plastic stars and the dents in the walls. But, right now, surrounded by the smell of dirt and sunshine and curry on the stove, he thinks _I'm fine_ and it feels like the truth.

He plays with the rip in the couch’s cover. 

He thinks he'll buy a sewing machine. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Next, get back in gear on my bigger projects.....sigh *rolls up sleeves*


End file.
